L-Dub fest gives films exposure

Staci Sturrock

Friday

Sep 30, 2011 at 12:01 AMSep 30, 2011 at 4:00 AM

This weekend's L-Dub Film Festival will showcase dozens of shorts and feature films, but the heart of it just may be the festival's Saturday night party at downtown Lake Worth's The Cottage - a get-together that organizers hope will give filmmakers and their friends a chance to mingle and talk movies.

"That's what L-Dub is about," says festival director Kenneth Marc Greenbaum. "It's not Cannes, it's not Sundance, but it's about giving these filmmakers a real good, honest shot at showing their films and getting bigger and better at their craft."

Although a handful of states and England are represented, "the bulk of the filmmakers are from right here in our backyard," says Greenbaum.

The festival, which takes place at the Lake Worth Playhouse's Stonzek Theatre, unspooled for the first time last year with the goal of expanding the possibilities of independent filmmaking in South Florida.

A category new to the festival this year: music videos, which attracted a number of submissions from local teens at Dreyfoos School of the Arts and G-Star School of the Arts.

The festival will open at 6 p.m. today with a block of shorts, followed by a filmmakers' reception and the 8 p.m. world premiere of Equal Strength, a drama filmed in South Florida.

But with almost 50 titles on the schedule, how does a ticket buyer choose what to see? These three films are on Greenbaum's watch list:

Hard to Come By: An award winner at several festivals, this short stars Hollywood actor Garrett M. Brown, who will lead a Q&A seminar for aspiring actors and filmmakers at the festival. (Greenbaum edited the film in Lake Worth.) Showing at 6 p.m. Saturday. Rats and Bullies: A documentary about bullying, made by the mother of a bullying victim who hanged herself. Says Greenbaum: "It makes you ask yourself, 'How did this happen? How did this happen in this day and age?' " Showing at 5 p.m. Sunday. Screw It: "An amazing 10-minute film that shows you that anybody can make a film, and it doesn't have to be a big Hollywood production," Greenbaum says. Showing at 4 p.m. Saturday.

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